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Letters between liberators: Lincoln and Aleksandr II
Published: 08 May, 2009, 19:08
Two 19th century figures were separated by continents, but brought together by a common belief in liberty.
It may come as no surprise that the people of the South see things a bit differently. Lincoln did not start the war in order to end slavery. He did it to drag the seceded states back into the Union, like an abusive husband who beats his wife to keep her from leaving him. And he was ultimately willing to let more than 620,000 Americans die in the fighting to accomplish that, not to mention the subjugation and economic devastation of a whole region of the country. Naturally he wouldn't want to go down in history as the President who presided over the breakup of the union. And he would surely understand the political and economic consequences to the North if the South were allowed to become independent, when the South was no longer a captive market for protected Northern manufactured goods and no longer the primary source of federal income through tariffs. Slavery was certainly one of the major issues of the time, but true humanitarian abolitionists were few even in the North. Some of the Confederate States would have remained in the Union, but were pushed over the edge into secession in outrage at Lincoln's unconstitutional call for troops to go invade their already seceded neighbors. Washington could have been a Union island surrounded by Confederate territory, if not for Lincoln's cannons trained on Maryland's capitol city to keep their legislators in line. As for the involvement of the Tsar, I applaud his humanitarianism in freeing the serfs. But it is natural that he would favor the Union over the Confederacy. One could easily see that he would not want to see the example of a successful division of a large country, considering the empire he and all his predecessors were keeping together. Still today Russia, a large and powerful country, chafes at secessionist movements along its edges rather than setting them free, and maintains a hegemony among some of its neighbors, former constituents of the old Soviet Union. And they're not the only ones. Consider Turkey's steadfast rule over the Kurds, or France's over the Basques, etc., etc. And let's not forget that the U.S. was founded on secession from Great Britain. But as far as Lincoln was concerned, secession was no longer an inalienable right of a free people under duress from their own government; all must submit to his authority.
This is a story that Americans should learn and learn again. First, only Russia, led by Tsar Aleksandr II, supported the United States in the War of the Rebellion from 1861 to 1865. Second, the Russian Navy kept the British and French fleets from intervening on behalf of the insurrectionist Confederacy after the 1862 Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) in Maryland. Because of Russia's timely help, President Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863. General Grant finally overcome General Lee at Appomattox, but this only possible with Russia's help. Third, and least well known but equally as important, President Lincoln and Tsar Aleksandr II fought rapacious moneylenders from the United States, England, France, and other nations who sought to enslave the might American and Russian peoples with chains of debt. President Lincoln fought them off with the issuance of Greenbacks, the creation of money backed by labor and the full faith and credit of the American people through their own sovereign government, in contrast to present Federal Reserve notes that are created out thin air by a cartel of private banks. Tsar Aleksandr II fought these moneylenders by refusing to create a central bank in Russia. I express my unconditional, heartfelt gratitude to the Russian people for helping the United States from being severed in twain, half-slave and half-free, and, on this great day in history, for making such prodigious sacrifices to vanquish the Fascist war machine in the Great Patriotic War. Peter J. of Minneapolis